


Like a Hero

by aibidil



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Battle of Hogwarts, Body Positivity, Chubby Neville, F/M, First Time, Friendship, Getting Together, Growing Up, Hogwarts, Hogwarts Seventh Year, Implied/Referenced Torture, Kissing, Post-Battle of Hogwarts, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-12
Updated: 2018-02-12
Packaged: 2019-03-17 03:42:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13650699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aibidil/pseuds/aibidil
Summary: Perpetually stuck on the periphery of Harry's inner circle, Neville has always felt like an onlooker. But when Harry leaves and war comes to Hogwarts, it's up to Neville—and Ginny—to redefine what a hero looks like.





	Like a Hero

**Author's Note:**

> I wish I'd had time to write a longer ode to Neville, as he is one of my ultimate favourite characters. Big thanks to Serra for running this fab fest and to restlessandordinary for giving it a once over.

As was common this year, Neville awoke in the Gryffindor boys' dorm wrapped around Ginny. But for the first time this year, all of the Gryffindor seventh-year boys were asleep in the room.

Neville wondered how long it would take for the adrenaline and fear to leave his body. He could still feel them, prickling his skin and fluttering his heart. He'd fallen fast asleep in a stupor once Ginny had nodded off, but he's fairly certain sleep won't come again that easy in the coming months. Last night, it hadn't been sleep so much as it had been a rebirth. There had been no dreams, no nightmares.

He's certain there will be dreams and nightmares.

He leans up on one elbow, glances at his wand on the side of the bed. He can't believe it's over. He can't believe what he'd done the day before.

No one had pulled the bed hangings closed the night before. It had been an unspoken agreement—what they needed was togetherness, the comfort of others, not separation.

Harry is in his bed, which had stayed empty all year, Ron tucked on one side and Hermione on the other.

During the year, the other empty beds—Ron's, Dean's—had been used as needed by various students. Small Slytherins who were hiding from the Carrows, younger Gryffindors who couldn't fall asleep for all the tension in the castle. All of the unspoken rules of the castle had changed this year, because it was war. They had done what needed doing, including opening up their dorm. But Harry's bed had stayed empty.

Harry's bed is no longer empty, and the war is over. Neville can't believe that. It'll take ages for him to believe that. He glances over at Harry, at the way that Ron and Hermione's hands are clasped together on top of Harry's body, like they're protecting him even in sleep. Neville wonders if this is the first time all three of them have slept at the same time since they'd run away last summer.

Neville looks down at Ginny, who is asleep against his chest. Ginny, with her fiery red hair and freckles, covered in bruises and dirt and cuts, with the paths of tears visible in the dirt on her cheeks. Ginny, who had worked tirelessly with him the entire year, fighting on what Ginny called "the school front."

He and Ginny have both grown up this year. Well, he supposes everyone in Hogwarts has grown up this year. But them, in particular. He feels like he and Ginny led a war. He and Ginny _did_ lead a war. At the beginning of the year he'd still felt so uncertain about his role, in the war and in life. He'd felt like a passive observer of the actions of the adults, and a passive observer of Harry, Ron, and Hermione. His Gran would ask him what _his_ place was, and though he'd wanted to say "I'm a member of the DA! I fought with Harry!" he knew it wasn't true. He knew he was an onlooker.

Ginny, too, had always felt underestimated, the youngest of seven, the only girl. She worked twice as hard to prove herself, and she was powerful and smart and funny, but she still always felt like the little sister. She had told Neville she felt like she could never really be part of Harry's inner circle—it would always be Harry, Ron, Hermione, and then, also, as a bonus!, Ginny. Ginny hated being a bonus. And then Harry left, cementing all of Ginny's insecurities about that. About being on the outside. Ginny hated being insecure. Ginny is not constitutionally insecure.

But dynamics shift, in war. Neville supposes they would've shifted with time, eventually, but the war sped it all up. Neville and Ginny, after the first weeks of school, found themselves looking around the room, waiting, waiting, for someone else to take charge. But it didn't happen.

Ginny had flopped next to him on the sofa in the common room one night. "We've got to do it, don't we," she had said, and it wasn't a question. "Yes," he'd answered. She'd reached up to pull her hair into a ponytail, smoothing the long ginger strands away from her face, checking for bumps, and Neville had watched her strong, freckled arms flexing. "Do you sometimes think," she'd whispered, pulling a hair tie around, "that our fate in knowing Harry, the point of it all, was to lead us to this?" Neville had swallowed. "Yes," he whispered back.

They were tortured.

They were tortured with magic.

They were beaten with fists.

They learned wandless Legilimency. He's still not sure how they managed that.

" _Crucio!_ " Alecto Carrow would call out, and Ginny would be in his mind, bringing up images of calm even as his physical body writhed. And then he would fall to the ground, and get up, and do the same for her. He liked when she brought up images of studying by the lake. She liked when he focussed on images of the field by the Burrow and laughing brothers.

They organised.

They hadn't been ready for the task, but they rose to it. They distributed supplies, they turned the Room of Requirement into a fortress. They protected the most vulnerable students, they befriended Aberforth.

The first time they kissed, Neville was upset because he'd failed to protect a younger student from the Carrows. He'd told Ginny he blamed himself, and she had got fire in her eyes and hollered confidence into his bones. He'd sat with wide eyes, listening to her, and then grabbed her face with shaky hands and kissed her. She'd looked surprised at first, then clambered onto his lap and properly snogged him. She felt hard and muscular under his hands and he'd pulled away because he wasn't sure he was allowed to feel her hardness and muscle, given that he didn't have any hardness and muscle to offer in return. Ginny Weasley dated Harry Potter, Dean Thomas. They were fit, slim blokes. But Ginny put her hands on him, anyway. She'd touched and squeezed and held on, just the way he did with her.

The next day, with worried eyes, Neville had asked, "What about Harry?" Ginny had shrugged, a casual motion, though her eyes were sad. "I don't—I don't think of him. Should I?" And he'd pulled her into a hug, her face buried in his jumper.

After Christmas hols, Ginny always slept in the boys' dorm if they weren't sleeping in the Room of Requirement. It seemed expedient, not romantic. They might be needed somewhere, there was no time to waste summoning each other. And if the warmth of another body eased the pain, who was to judge?

The first time they had sex, they'd just painted "Dumbledore's Army, still recruiting" on the wall outside the Great Hall. It had been reckless and probably pointless, but it had also felt free and real and important. When they finally stopped running, back in the safety of the dorm, Ginny had jumped at him, and they'd been full of adrenaline. "You look really hot when you're rebelling," Ginny had whispered in a low voice, and Neville had pulled her jumper off over her paint-stained face. "You should know, I haven't—" she said, and for one horrible second Neville thought she was going to say she wanted to wait for Harry. But instead she said, "I'm glad it's you," and tugged open his trousers with painted fingers. "But I don't look like a hero," he'd said, taken aback by her intensity, and she'd given him a strange look and said, "Yes, you do."

After Easter, Ginny hadn't come back, and neither had Luna. Neville had become an automaton of rebellion and worry, and he would lie shaking in his bed, alone, at night, worrying that everyone he loved would end up dead.

That part had seemed to go on forever.

But last night, after the battle had ended and the hubbub had cleared from the air, Ginny was still alive. Harry was still alive. Voldemort was dead. But Ginny was grieving. Everyone, everywhere was grieving. Neville had hugged his Gran, accepted her pride, and she'd accepted his, and then he'd run off to find Ginny. She'd fallen against his chest, wrapped her lean arms around his middle, and squeezed. "I'm so, so sorry," he said, and she just squeezed harder. Neville knew they didn't need to say anything else about it, at least not now. He knew this was the hard part.

And then Ginny had raised her head and pointed across the Hall, to where Ron and Hermione were taking Harry's elbows. Harry looked like death, and Neville wondered at the way Ron and Hermione had become habituated to caring for Harry, even in the midst of their own grief. Dean and Seamus were approaching them, and Parvati and Lavender, and Luna, and Ginny bade farewell to her parents and pulled Neville by the hand. It had seemed clear that they all needed to be together. The last thing they needed was to decamp to separate empty, grieving houses. They needed to bask in the thing that had killed Voldemort—love. Even the messy love of grief.

So the friends, the "student warriors" as Ginny had been calling them all year, gathered around Harry, leading him back to the Gryffindor dorm, where he could sleep, where he could belong, surrounded by the friends who would be the family he didn't have.

Ginny hadn't let go of Neville's hand. She jerked her chin towards Harry and said, "You still look like a hero, you know."

"It's okay, you know. I'd understand if you—"

But Ginny had shaken her head with vigour. "Don't you dare sell yourself short." And Neville had seen in her eyes the fierce love borne of their year together, their year as the warriors on the school front. Then she'd added in a quieter voice, "I can tell it's over for Harry, too. It's not going to break his heart. But you'd be worth it, even if it would."

They'd all fallen into beds, Harry with Ron and Hermione, Lavender and Parvati, Dean and Seamus, and Luna. Ginny had kicked off her boots and crawled into Neville's arms, which felt so right after so much time apart, and she'd cried for Fred, and Neville inexpertly intoned a magical funeral chant that he knew that was supposed to help a soul ease into the beyond.

The war is over, but the mess is not. Neville looks at the rising sun shining into the boys' dorm, illuminating the dirt and cuts and scars on their bodies. He sees the way they've all come together, surrounding the people who are hurting most, buoying each other up, and Neville lays his head down, pulls Ginny closer, and goes back to sleep.


End file.
